World in the Balance


1. Title, director and release year?


2. What is the central argument or narrative of the film?

- China has become one of the largest economies in the world, and their actions on the environment will have an impact on the entire world
- China’s explosive growth has put them into a spiral where they can barely maintain the energy needed to support their consumer country, yet need to maintain a balance to reduce the amount of pollutants being released

3. What sustainability problems does the film draw out?

- The effects of industrialization
- The effects of affluence on a country and it’s industries

4. What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why?

- The ability of pollutants to travel across the ocean
o Truly puts the perspective of industrialization in perspective
- 100 million people moving from suburbs to urban cities
o Largest migration in history
- China is home to 7 of the world’s 10 most polluted cities
o Lead and sulfur being in the air all of the time
- The industrial binge that China went on for 20 years without having any kind of pollution of energy restrictions at all
o China has grown so drastically on the large industrial scale that they have ignored the smaller needs of the home life
o The continual use of coal to heat homes although it is dirty and dangerous, price overrules everything
- The growth of markets
o Passenger cars may reach a growth of 80% this year alone
o The fact that Euro 2 standard is 10 years out of date yet used as a selling point for vehicles
- The amount of actions the occur in all aspects fo china without rules or regulations controlling them
o The logging
o Emissions
o Standard of living

5. What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by?

- The advertisements for large corporations such as Microsoft before a sustainability movie
o Their impact on the environment
- China stating that they cannot afford to build cleaner and more efficient plants, yet they are losing 6% GDP every year due to health related issues
- The fact that the government order hillside farming to stop and planted tress, yet is not doing anything to control to poisonous emissions in the citities
- The Chinese government seeking for alternative energy in cars, but what about the industrial plants?
- Film began about talking about pollution reaching the us coasts, but did not go into any more details

6. What additional information does this film compel you to seek out? Where do you want to dig deeper and what connections do you want to make with other issues, factors, problems, etc.?

- How quickly did something as extreme as the one child law get put into effect
- What effects have environmentalists in china taken to improve life quality?
- Are there currently any standards that are being developed?

7. What audiences does the film best address? What kind of imagination is fostered in viewers? Do you think the film is likely to change the way viewers think about and act on environmental problems?

- Industrialist

8. What kinds of action or points of intervention are suggested by the film?

- Actions need to be taken to clean up dirty industries because the future is showing a path of 2 megacountries, china and the US, contributing to emissions in the ozone more than the rest of the world combined
- Regulations need to be put In place to be able to handle the industrial growth successfully

9. What could have been added to this film to enhance its environmental educational value?

- Wish that the went into more detail about the pollutants reaching across the ocean from China to the West Coast of the US
o Began to explain but would be interesting to see more effects of one country on the world
- Effects of US pollution on the world scale